Elvis Presley: It Happened At The World's Fair

ELVIS PRESLEY: IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLDʼS FAIR (1963)

1) Beyond The Bend; 2) Relax; 3) Take Me To The Fair; 4) They Remind Me Too Much Of You; 5) One Broken Heart; 6) Iʼm Falling In Love Tonight; 7) Cotton Candy; 8) A World Of Our Own; 9) How Would You Like To Be; 10) Happy Ending.

General verdict: Derivative, cutesy, boring, and who the heck loves happy endings?

At least weʼre not in Hawaii any more, though, honestly, writing a movie script that would somehow tie together Elvis, Elvisʼ girls, and the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle was hardly that much more of a noble enterprise than writing yet another script about golden beaches, luaus, and mama shrimps. In the context of Elvisʼ musical career, though, the only question that may be asked is — does this particular soundtrack have at least one song of the caliber of ʽReturn To Senderʼ or ʽCanʼt Help Falling In Loveʼ? Just one, one single, teeny-weeny bit of a song like that? We know we cannot be arrogant enough to hope for two... but one? maybe?..

All eyes turn first and foremost to Otis Blackwell, who wrote ʽReturn To Senderʼ and who returns to contribute ʽOne Broken Heartʼ — and it is a major disappointment in comparison, a fairly straightforward R&B number with nothing but a simple and generic guitar pattern to drive it. Not bad or anything, but no interesting hooks or unique features, and the public reacted accordingly, making the single miss the Top 10. (Perhaps not coincidentally, this would be one of the last songs Otis would write for Elvis). And there you go — if you canʼt even count on Otis this time around, who else could you count on?

The return to slightly less exotic American soil in the movies is musically paralleled by the relative lack of exotic embarrassments — but the actual result is that this soundtrack is very even, very derivative, and ultimately just very dull. As usual, it is not so much the fault of Elvis himself as the fact that all those corporate songwriters were meticulously pumping out the same formulae. For instance, the good old reliable pair of Tipper and Bennett pump out ʽRelaxʼ, an inferior clone of ʽFeverʼ if there ever was one; and Ben Raleigh contributes ʽHow Would You Like To Beʼ, a song that shamelessly pilfers the hook of ʽGood Luck Charmʼ but transforms the song into a chiming nursery lullaby — granted, in the movie he does sing it to a kid, but in the context of the album the implication is that in six years time, Elvisʼ typical audience has «progressed» from 15-year olds to 5-year olds, and this is... sad.

Actually, I have to take that back, because, surprise surprise, arguably the best song on the entire album is ʽCotton Candy Landʼ, a direct lullaby written by Ruth Bachelor and Bob Roberts (the same pair who wrote the sappy ʽBecause Of Loveʼ) that has the benefit of containing subtle gospel overtones — the way Elvis delivers the opening line "sandmanʼs cominʼ, yes heʼs cominʼ", youʼd think he was singing about Jesus, not sandman. There are also some exquisite guitar and piano flourishes giving the song a mystical, even ominous flair — not sure if Ruth and Bob intended it to be that way, but this teensy-weensy touch of creepiness is precisely what it takes to make my ears perk up a bit. Unfortunately, this was probably an accident, because nothing else on the record contains any such signs of ambiguity.

The biggest advantage of the album is how mercifully short it is — in fact, it is curious to note that five out of ten songs do not even manage to hit the two-minute mark. It is almost as if they were intentionally shortening them out so that Elvis could slice through them as quickly as possible, then forget about them for eternity. (A notable exception is ʽHow Would You Like To Beʼ, extended so that it can include a playful instrumental section and a cutesy rockʼnʼroll coda, but youʼd have to watch Elvis playing with little girl Vicky Tiu in the movie to get what it is all about). At least Girls! Girls! Girls! had a tiny bit of that old rambunctious spirit manifesting itself every once in a while; It Happened At The Worldʼs Fair has instead the spirit of a toddler, and a fairly flat and boring toddler at that. Then again, one might find it so completely purged of any elements of accursed machismo that it might come across as an unexpected delight to anybody who... oh wait, no, I forgot that ʽRelaxʼ at least ("letʼs uncork the stopper, come to papa") is definitely not for toddlers. Damn, there goes the family entertainment value all to hell. 

Julian Casablancas: Phrazes For The Young

JULIAN CASABLANCAS: PHRAZES FOR THE YOUNG (2009)

1) Out Of The Blue; 2) Left & Right In The Dark; 3) 11th Dimension; 4) 4 Chords Of The Apocalypse; 5) Ludlow St.; 6) River Of Brakelights; 7) Glass; 8) Tourist.

General verdict: An unexpectedly solid mix of Sixtiesʼ, Seventiesʼ, and Eightiesʼ influences, not to mention the conceptual time machine all the way back to 1900.

"The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible", thus begins Oscar Wildeʼs Phrases And Philosophies For The Young, and "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance" is how it ends — and now just look at this album cover and everything becomes crystal clear. Some might wonder why Julian Casablancas even felt a need to make his own solo album when he had always been the primary creative force in his own band, but the thing is, the Strokes are a band, and the band members do happen to have creative differences — one of the reasons why Angles, the much awaited follow-up to First Impressions Of Earth, was held up for such a long period. The way I see it, Casablancas is more of a Mick Jaggerish presence in the band, whereas Nick Valensi is somewhat more Keith Richardish — a very rough and symbolic approximation, of course, given that none of them ever really sound like the Stones, but then I guess itʼs just a nice analogy that can always be used to describe the opposing forces of the vocalist frontman and the guitar-wielding sidekick in any rock band, so there you go.

Anyway, when I first skimped through some descriptions / reviews of Julianʼs solo album, I ended up with the wrong impression that he wanted to make an electronic dance-pop record or something like that, and that Strokes fans who like their guitar music would probably be seriously disgruntled about this. Fear not, though. The record does feature quite a bit of synthesized keyboards, as well as programmed drums (Casablancas played most of the instruments himself), but its overall sound and style is not that much removed from the usual Strokes vibe. It is most certainly not an easy-going rockʼnʼroll record, but neither were First Impressions; with each new album, the Strokes were progressively demanding more and more to be taken as serious artists, and Phrazes For The Young is simply the next step.

Surprisingly, the album is pretty damn good. First and foremost, Julian corrects the biggest mistake of First Impressions — trims down the length: there are but eight tracks here, amounting to about 40 minutes worth of music. Second, there is an interesting flow to the tracks: the album sucks you in with a few relatively catchy and upbeat numbers, gradually makes you come to terms with the alliance between analog and electronic equipment, then slows down into pensive, singer-songwriterish territory. By the time itʼs over, you might have stopped paying close attention, but you might still be subconsciously influenced by the constant shift of direction so much that your brain might give off a small «thatʼs it? I want more!...» impulse, whereas with First Impressions, it was more of an «enough already!...» after a while.

The album opener ʽOut Of The Blueʼ is the slightly deceiving Strokes-like opener, a fast-paced, catchy pop-rocker with a «dual core» of rapidly strummed guitars and organ-like synthesizers in classic Blondie mode — plus a bunch of psychedelic lead guitar overdubs later on. The lyrics are moderately cryptic and confusing, and even if Julian finishes his odd personal tale with "thatʼs all Iʼm gonna say now before they come knockinʼ on my door", I think that he still got plenty of time before "they" actually figure out why the hell are they supposed to knock on it in the first place, unless they take the line "somewhere along the way my anger turned to vengeance" too literally and send in a bomb expert or something. But I do like the overall mood — the bitter-cynical vocals, the romantic electronics, and the hallucinatory lead guitars generate an odd atmosphere of hipster coolness that you do not always get on a typical Strokes record.

The next two songs are easily the cheeriest and most synth-pop-like on the whole album, though, ironically, ʽLeft & Right In The Darkʼ reminds me less of the Cars than it does of Dire Straitsʼ ʽWalk Of Lifeʼ — utilizing the same trick of drilling a happy keyboard riff in your head even before the full arrangement kicks in. The build-up from verse to bridge to chorus is quite decent, even if the idea of using "wake up, wake up" as the vocal hook for the chorus might seem trite and over-worn — and it is useless to hope that Julian Casablancas, the one-man band, may be capable of outplaying Arcade Fire. Still a good song, as is the follow-up, ʽ11th Dimensionʼ, probably the biggest throwback to the Eighties on the album — sounds like a bittersweet ABC pop anthem (though Martin Fry would probably shy away from a lyric like "I live on the frozen surface of a fireball / Where cities come together to hate each other in the name of sport").

The record then undergoes quite a drastic shift, as the ironically titled (since it utilizes a fairly standard chord progression) ʽ4 Chords Of The Apocalypseʼ slows it down to the heart rate of a meditative country waltz, as if Julian suddenly decided to go all Gram Parsons on our asses. This is where things get seriously unexpected — it was pop-rock before that, and now we are in full-blown singer-songwriter mode, and even the vocals, usually processed and distant, are now moving in closer and trying to weave a blue-eyed soul atmosphere around you. Is it good? I am not sure about that, but it startled me, and thatʼs probably the most I can ask from this guy. After this, ʽLudlow St.ʼ continues the slow balladeering vibe, as Julian gets symbolically drunk, picks up inspiration from Leonard Cohen — maybe? — and attempts to connect his own story with that of Ludlow St., going all the way back to 1624... with a banjo on his knee, no less.

This new feel permeates the record until the very end — youʼd think it were a bit risky, not to mention arrogant, to end the album with a song called ʽTouristʼ, but in truth, it is melodically more similar to a Neil Young ballad than anything by Radiohead: in fact, even just glancing at the lyrics ("I feel like a tourist, out in the country...") and remembering how the chorus hook goes makes me think old Neil would have a blast with this song, maybe throwing in a bit of dirty fuzz over its nifty little acoustic riff. Granted, all this deep melancholy does seem a little artificial for a comfy urban guy like Casablancas — but then, remember, "the first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible", isnʼt it?

All in all, do not be surprised, but I think that this is Julianʼs best offering since Is This It — simply because the solo format has allowed him to do something ever so slightly different and expanding at once into two completely opposite territories (synth-pop and traditional singer-songwriting stuff). It is absolutely not enough to make me go wow and welcome the guy as the new definitive spokesman for his generation, or even to justify the comparison between himself and Oscar Wilde, but he has managed to make himself more interesting to me with this record, and I might even want to spend a bit more time with it to understand why. 

Set Fire To Flames: Sings Reign Rebuilder

SET FIRE TO FLAMES: SINGS REIGN REBUILDER (2001)

1) ʽI Will Be True...ʼ (From Lips Of Lying Dying Wonder Body #1)/Reign Rebuilder [Head]; 2) Vienna Arcweld/Fucked Gamelan/Rigid Tracking; 3) Steal Compass/Drive North/Disappear; 4) Wild Dogs Of The Thunderbolt/ʽThey Cannot Lock Me Up... I Am Eternally Free...ʼ (From Lips Of Lying Dying Wonder Body #2); 5) Omaha; 6) There Is No Dance In Frequency And Balance; 7) Côte DʼAbrahams Roomtone/ʽWhatʼs Going On?...ʼ (From Lips Of Lying Dying Wonder Body #3); 8) Love Song For 15 Ontario (w/ Singing Police Car); 9) Injur: Gutted Two-Track; 10) When I First Get To Phoenix; 11) Shit-Heap-Gloria Of The New Town Planning...; 12) Jesus/Pop; 13) Esquimalt Harbour; 14) Two Tears In A Bucket; 15) Fading Lights Are Fading.../Reign Rebuilder [Tail Out].

General verdict: Conceptually sound, emotionally hollow — loneliness and lament taken to almost ridiculous heights of boredom.

If Silver Mt. Zion was largely the brainchild of Efrim Menuck, then the second largest split-off side project off Godspeed You! Black Emperor mainly owed its existence to David Bryant and Mike Moya, the bandʼs other two guitarists. Just like Silver Mt. Zion, this one was formed in order to explore ideas and concepts that did not quite fit in with GY!BEʼs standard megalo-vision, and you can see that right from the circumstances in which their first LP was recorded. To do it, the 13 musicians constituting this band moved into a decrepit century-old two-story building that was already marked for demolition — and ended up with a largely improvised 73 minute-long piece of musique concrète, combining minimalistic melodies with all sorts of ambient sounds, from creaking floors to dripping taps to passing cars.

The artistic goals of such an enterprise are fairly obvious — in fact, they are not that much different from the goals of either GY!BE as such or Silver Mt. Zion: most of these guysʼ work represents a never-ending lament for the passing of things. Signs Reign Rebuilder invites us to a rather lengthy mourning service, in which the main acting is rather evenly split between man and the very things that man has both given birth to and then discarded without thinking. As Paul McCartney said it thirty years earlier, "why, why, says the junk in the yard". Here, the junk is given its own voice, and the musicians are assembled to amplify it and make it heard, without ever passing judgement on anything — after all, birth and death do constitute the natural cycle of life, so this is all about mourning, never about accusing.

Unfortunately, while the concept certainly works on an intellectual level, I am not entirely sure what it would take to make it work on a purely sensory one. For example, already the second track here consists of about 13 minutes of relatively quiet noise — much of it sounding like somebody is dragging an empty pail across a path of gravel, then trying to tune up a completely dysfunctional radio, then using a cello to imitate the squeaking of a rusty see-saw. Eventually, some percussion joins in the «fun» to add dynamics and maybe even a bit of a crescendo to bring things to a boil, but this is way too small a pay-off for ten minutes of your life which you may have wasted trying to find spiritual nirvana in the abovementioned sounds.

If you remember the concept, it can all make sense and receive a plausible interpretation, but, putting it mildly, it ainʼt much fun to listen to, and I am using the broadest understanding of «fun» that can be applied to such cases. That Sings Reign Rebuilder is not about particularly catchy or particularly complex melodies is obviously understood; it should certainly all be about mood-setting atmosphere. The problem is, it is difficult to generate startling or simply impressive atmosphere if your rules require you to restrict yourself to slow, quiet, repetitive guitar and/or string-based dirges and looped tapes of whatever creaking, hissing, grumbling, or scratching sounds your ear might catch in the confines of your dilapidated environment. It is probably not impossible, but it is difficult, and the way I see it, Set Fire To Flames have not truly risen up to this challenge. Over the course of two listens, not a single moment on the album has managed to specifically grab my attention.

At their best, Set Fire To Flames sound like a slightly hushed-down and largely unnecessary version of GY!BE themselves — check ʽSteal Compassʼ, a six-minute crescendo that uses the GY!BE formula, but forgets to invent a strong theme and fails to generate the necessary energy, even when the obligatory echoey guitar trills begin electrifying the space around you... then just fizzle out in disillusioned impotence. If it was meant to be that way, itʼs OK with me, but, again, only on a cold rational level — like a torch-bearer for all the mediocrity in this world that strives to be big and fails midway through. Even worse are the ten minutes of ʽShit-Heap-Gloria Of The New Town Planningʼ (where do they come up with all these titles?), which suffer from the exact same flaws except... well, ten minutes. For Godʼs sake, guys, the world does not really need you doing the same stuff that you can do so much better in a larger format.

Even so, this is Set Fire To Flames at their best. At their worst, they might sound like a young string trio tuning up (ʽTwo Tears In A Bucketʼ), or they might simply clog your audiospace with looped sounds of helicopter blades (ʽ Côte DʼAbrahams Roomtoneʼ) or something like that. The bad news is, it does not translate into any sort of cohesive experience. I would love to be able to visualize yet another devastated post-apocalyptic landscape from what I am being offered, but there is simply nothing too haunting about these sounds. Everything sounds so improvised that I wouldnʼt be surprised to learn they made it all up in 24 hours, not a single minute of which involved any fleeting inspiration (update: apparently, it took them five days, which is really not that much different from 24 hours in the grand scheme of things). Alas, the result is a disaster, even if quite a few contemporary reviews were glowing at the time (like a 9 from Pitchfork, with the reviewer gloating over the sonic construction of the record as if heʼd never previously heard anything that sounded like it). Well, Silver Mt. Zion 1 : Set Fire To Flames 0, I have to say. 

ProjeKct Three: Masque

PROJEKCT THREE: MASQUE (1999)

1) Masque 1; 2) Masque 2; 3) Masque 3; 4) Masque 4; 5) Masque 5; 6) Masque 6; 7) Masque 7; 8) Masque 8; 9) Masque 9; 10) Masque 10; 11) Masque 11; 12) Masque 12; 13) Masque 13.

General verdict: Good album. Let Crimsonologists figure out the rest.

All right, onwards to ProjeKct Three. Since itʼs three, it made sense to have only three players... well, ProjeKct Two also had three players, but I guess thereʼs a bare minimum beyond which a ProjeKct ceases to be a ProjeKct and becomes «Fripp and annoying sidekick». Anyway, this here ProjeKct Three consists of Fripp, Gunn, and Pat Mastelotto replacing Adrian Belew. Given that in the previous ProjeKct Belew was playing drums as well, one might think that there wouldnʼt be that much difference, but there definitely is — Mastelotto is, after all, a professional drummer, and, unsurprisingly, ProjeKct Three is far more percussion-heavy and percussion-dependent than its immediate predecessor. And I do prefer the sound of real drums to that of V-drums, so thank you very much for bringing back this weird human element.

The five live shows by ProjeKct Three all took place in March 1999 somewhere in Texas; full versions, as usual, have been available from DGMLive since 2014, but casual fans will probably find contentment with Masque, collecting about sixty minutesʼ worth of performances from all the five shows. Sonically, this particular ProjeKct stands somewhere in between One and Two: it sort of preserves the astral-groove vibe of Two, but returns to darker and heavier territory, with consistently aggressive bass playing and plenty of thick, distorted, dirty lead playing from the Frippmeister, though he seems just as happy playing any possible or impossible sort of weird psychedelic tone that he sees fit on any occasion.

Everything is perfectly listenable because, as with the other ProjeKcts, groove always takes precedence over experimentation — rule of thumb is that you can do just about anything as long as it does not take you off the beaten path. Describing the music is another matter, though: each track is somewhat special and predictable at the same time. ʽMasque 1ʼ, for instance, begins like a slightly grungified jazz-fusion track from the mid-Seventies, then lays on the percussion and bass so thick that it switches over to the «industrial» realm, going from gently stroking your ass to kicking it real hard in a matter of seconds. Itʼs cool, except that about half, if not more, of the other ʽMasquesʼ behave in more or less the same way, veering between the fusionesque and the industrial-esque. Formally, the grooves are all different in terms of chords, tonalities, and tempos, but on the whole, it just feels like one very, very, very long experience.

I was a little amused about ʽMasque 2ʼ, though — for all I know, it seems to borrow its groove, with a few small modifications, from the poppy Belew track ʽMan With An Open Heartʼ (just listen to that bassline); no idea if that was intentional or not, but I like to think of this particular improv as an exercise in creative deconstruction, and it does stand out from the rest because of the relaxed, simple pop groove, contrasting with all that other math-rock stuff. Other than that, well... just another day in the life of the ProjeKcts.

David Gilmour: On An Island

DAVID GILMOUR: ON AN ISLAND (2006)

1) Castellorizon; 2) On An Island; 3) The Blue; 4) Take A Breath; 5) Red Sky At Night; 6) This Heaven; 7) Then I Close My Eyes; 8) Smile; 9) A Pocketful Of Stones; 10) Where We Start.

General verdict: Quiet, uneventful, but tasteful meditative bliss for all those who have nowhere to go and nothing to do — a fairly apt listen for 2020, as it turns out.

For almost 12 years after the release of Division Bell, Gilmour had largely stayed silent as an artist, and, all things considered, it was a good thing: Division Bell was not particularly bad, but it did show that Dave had few new ideas, and releasing another record of softly moping, mildly depressing ballads would do little good to either Pink Floydʼs or his own reputation. The man had nothing to prove to anybody, no contractual obligations and no need to keep the memory of Pink Floyd in the public eye with new product. This situation alone means that when he re-emerged in 2006 with his next solo album, it actually meant something to the 60-year old guy.

Artistically speaking, On An Island is David Gilmourʼs Double Fantasy (the comparison made even more legitimate by the fact that his wife, Polly Samson, collaborated with him lyrically on a few tracks): an album by somebody who has finally found inner peace and happiness and would like to share them with you. Slow, bluesy, melodic, atmospheric, lonesome, introspective, it has all the trademarks of most of Daveʼs solo as well as Dave Floydʼs products, with one important exception: bleakness and depression have given way to a special blissful melancholy. No longer wishing to get angry or desperate about the evils of the world at large, David Gilmour now drowns his memories of it in the solitary wonders of natural beauty. This is where his passion for flying and sailing comes to be fully understood — the man is a natural-born escapist, and On An Island is arguably his most clearly pronounced statement of escapism ever.

If you know anything about Pink Floyd and David Gilmour, you might probably be able to figure out how the record sounds just by glancing at the song titles — ʽCastellorizonʼ, ʽOn An Islandʼ, ʽThe Blueʼ, ʽRed Sky At Nightʼ, ʽThen I Close My Eyesʼ... clearly, this is going to be a romantic musical fantasy, inspired by all the lonely and exotic places that Mr. Gilmour had had the opportunity to visit by way of globalization and an impressive bank roll. Fortunately, Mr. Gilmour is an accomplished artist, rather than Hugh Hefner or Emperor Tiberius, and On An Island is a lovely and exquisite, if not too memorable, sonic painting, rather than just a standard piece of ornate muzak that you could play in the lounge of a five-star resort hotel without fear that anybody would ever start paying any attention to it.

The link to the old universe of Pink Floyd still stays strong: ʽCastellorizonʼ is a classic Floyd-style opener, with a long and careful buildup of smoky synthesizers, ghostly sound effects, unexpected overdubs (at one point, a rusty lo-fi banjo appears out of the blue in much the same way as the lo-fi acoustic guitar on ʽWish You Were Hereʼ), and, eventually, a blistering assault of deeply cherished sustained guitar notes rising out of the synth waves. The tonality and the guitar tone are reminiscent of ʽShine On You Crazy Diamondʼ, but this is not the music of mourning for a departed friend, this is more like an emotional interpretation of the ocean at night — a nature soundtrack whose expressivity goes far beyond any average soundtrack, but cannot pretend to rise to any sort of tragic heights. This is what you are going to get all the way through — a musical painting of decidedly and intentionally limited ambition as painted by a certified genius painter. Like a Renoir landscape or something.

The good news is that On An Island stands to repeated listens — surprisingly, many of the tracks are slow growers whose calming, soothing effect accumulates over time. At first, you might not be grabbed at all, because the melodies flow by in a lulling, hookless fashion; but once you get used to the slowness and smoothness, the subtle contrast between the verse and chorus melody of the title track — with guest stars Crosby and Nash joining David for that extra feel — reveals the difference between pleasantly sucking in the night atmosphere (verse) and having a romantic epiphany (chorus). Itʼs all small scale, nothing truly shattering in either the instrumentation or the vocal harmonies, but there is a nice dynamic here. More importantly, Davidʼs guitar sounds closer to the listener than it has in ages — one of the worst aspects of all his early solo albums was that the guitar was really deep down in the mix, distant and almost deliberately refusing to be involved in your emotional centers. On An Island might just be the first of Gilmourʼs albums in a long, long time which eliminates that issue by putting the guitar, crisp and clear, on top of everything else. These are far from Daveʼs best solos — precisely because his best solos involve desperate emotional turmoil, which is not the case here — but boy do they sound good.

Not all of the record sounds like a lullaby: just like on Double Fantasy you can come across an ʽIʼm Losing Youʼ to remind you that you do have to earn your right to blissful happiness through suffering, On An Island has stuff like ʽTake A Breathʼ, a mid-tempo psychedelic rocker which disrupts the calm flow with distorted guitars, loud echoey vocals, and sinister lyrics teaching you self-reliance in the face of grim odds: "If Iʼm the one to throw you overboard / At least I showed you how to swim for shore". (Arguably the best thing about the song is its mid-section, eerily reproducing the feeling of being dragged underwater). In a different vein, ʽThis Heavenʼ is a slow blues-rocker driven by a nice little acoustic riff, with a slightly raggedy arrangement that one could expect from some early 2000s indie-rock outfit like the Black Keys (or the White Stripes?); however, it also breaks the immersion effect, and I am not sure if Iʼm really a fan.

In the end, I shall not lie to you about being in love with any of the individual songs; perhaps the closest you can get is with ʽThe Blueʼ, which you could define as "Alan Parsons trying to write his own ʽUs And Themʼ" — with Rick Wright on vocals, a melody that imitates a steady rowing pattern and the most Zen-like arrangement of ʼem all if you are in the mood for it. But then again, I was never deeply in love with peacefully blissful Pink Floyd, such as ʽFat Old Sunʼ — a song that was arguably the closest in spirit to Gilmourʼs vision for this record (and, not coincidentally, resurrected for his tour in support of it); I just thought this music was written in order to be likable, and I dutifully liked it. I dutifully like this album, too, and I certainly think Gilmour has earned the right to make a point with it — at the age of 60, oneʼs chances of capturing the subtle beauty of nature are probably a little higher than making a rousing social statement.

For the record, besides Crosby and Nash on the title track, the sessions feature quite a few notable guest stars, including Phil Manzanera (who is largely responsible for the «iron» sound of ʽTake A Breathʼ)  and Robert Wyatt (whose elegant, but somnambulant cornet playing on ʽThen I Close My Eyesʼ is, unfortunately, somewhat lost here). Nevertheless, the lionʼs share of all playing credits still go to David himself, who plays most of the guitar, bass, and percussion parts — now thatʼs what you call true escapism. In the end, it doesnʼt really matter how much the final product matters to me, you, or anybody else; what is important is that On An Island really produces the impression of a grateful love letter from the artist to his Creator, and this alone makes it fully meaningful even if you do not have the wish to replay it over and over. Then again, I am writing this review in the era of COVID lockdown, and as we all end up stranded on little islands of our own, God only knows how strongly this kind of music could resonate with anybody right now. 

Elvis Presley: Girls! Girls! Girls!

ELVIS PRESLEY: GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! (1962)

1) Girls! Girls! Girls!; 2) I Donʼt Wanna Be Tied; 3) Where Do You Come From; 4) I Donʼt Want To; 5) Weʼll Be Together; 6) A Boy Like Me, A Girl Like You; 7) Earth Boy; 8) Return To Sender; 9) Because Of Love; 10) Thanks To The Rolling Sea; 11) Song Of The Shrimp; 12) The Walls Have Ears; 13) Weʼre Coming In Loaded.

General verdict: One great song, one good song, and I think the Kingʼs facial expression on the cover of this album pretty much tells you everything else you need to know.

One can only imagine the level of desperation in the Kingʼs camp that would have led to the artistically suicidal decision to resort to a cover of one of Mötley Crüeʼs biggest hits. Not only would the world at large plunge in a state of total shock to hear Americaʼs golden boyʼs braggy tales of exploits at Tattletails and Crazy Horse, but to see Elvis with frizzy hair, in a bikerʼs outfit, drooling at the sight of lusty curves in a sleazy strip joint...

...oops, sorry, wrong location in the multiverse. Yes, the girls-girls-girls of 1962 were actually quite different from the girls-girls-girls of 1987 in details, but the essence of the song is exactly the same — "Iʼm just a red blooded boy and I canʼt stop thinkinʼ about [hemoglobin]". Fun trivia bit: the song was originally recorded by the Coasters a year earlier and was actually written for them by Leiber and Stoller — with the two unofficially ejected from Elvisʼ circle by the Colonel, the only way he could still remain in touch with them was through such covers. Interesting, though, that they even named the movie after the song — I guess a money-packinʼ idea is still a money-packinʼ idea even if it comes from your enemies. The Coastersʼ version, by the way, is much more slow and relaxed; the Elvis version is ironically closer to their ʽYakety Yakʼ schtick, both in tempo and in the trademark yakety-sax solo by the ever-present Boots Randolph.

Nothing too special, for sure, but at least the breakneck speed and mildly hooliganish nature of the title track make it a much better opening than ʽTonight Is Right For Loveʼ or ʽBlue Hawaiiʼ. Not surprisingly, the album takes a dive bomb from there — you need only to look at the usual list of songwriters, see the proceedings completely dominated by Tepper and Bennett, and walk on by. The usual mix of toothless pop-rockers mimicking past glories and corny ballads spewing antiquated sentiments... you know the drill.

The name of Otis Blackwell still catches the eye whenever it comes along, and this time, it does not betray the feeble trust — ʽReturn To Senderʼ, one of the Kingʼs biggest soundtrack hits, is as good a pop song as Otis ever wrote. Itʼs not even the melody itself, but rather the way the song presents itself as a funny, slightly intriguing, narrative — presenting the rejected narrator not as a longing, yearning, heartbroken person à la ʽPlease Mr. Postmanʼ, but rather as a somewhat confused lover who honestly has no idea of whatʼs going on. Plus the catchiness, plus the wicked bass sax lead lines, itʼs a classic and you know it. Unfortunately, the other Blackwell tune on the record, ʽWeʼre Coming In Loadedʼ, is a short, generic, and perfunctory rockʼnʼroll number that seems to have been specifically written for the purpose of having a song about fishing. (It is no coincidence that ʽWeʼre Coming In Loadedʼ was written to accomodate the movie script, while ʽReturn To Senderʼ actually ended up having the movie script accomodated to it).

Other than ʽReturn To Senderʼ and the title track, there is little to recommend about this record. Itʼs not that Tipper and Bennett arenʼt exactly trying — all of their contributions touch upon different genres and styles — but it all comes out corny in the end, culminating in the godawful embarrassment of ʽSong Of The Shrimpʼ which is disrespectful to the calypso genre, the entire shrimp population, and every music listener with at least a tiny bit of musical taste. ʽEarth Boyʼ is probably the best of all these genre experiments, a study in «exotica» with a complex musical arrangement, but Elvis does not seem to be particularly inspired when singing those lines about "earth boy dreaming of angel".

The only other song from the soundtrack that was deemed worthy of inclusion onto Command Performances: The Essential 60ʼs Masters (the «definitive» compilation of Elvisʼ best material from his movie soundtracks) is Ruth Bachelor and Bob Robertsʼ sappy ballad ʽBecause Of Loveʼ, whose only point of interest to me is that the ascending melodic line leading from verse to bridge is exactly the same as on the Donaysʼ ʽDevil In His Heartʼ (which we all know, of course, from the Beatlesʼ version). It might be just a stereotypical progression, but it is funny that both songs were released in the exact same year, so it would be interesting to know who influenced who. Or, wait, maybe not really that interesting. ʽDevil In His / Her Heartʼ is a much better song anyway: lots of heartbroken tension there, whereas ʽBecause Of Loveʼ just drips yucky, sticky honey all over your carpet. No need to bother with it, or with this album in general. 

The Strokes: First Impressions Of Earth

THE STROKES: FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EARTH (2006)

1) You Only Live Once; 2) Juicebox; 3) Heart In A Cage; 4) Razorblade; 5) On The Other Side; 6) Vision Of Division; 7) Ask Me Anything; 8) Electricityscape; 9) Killing Lies; 10) Fear Of Sleep; 11) 15 Minutes; 12) Ize Of The World; 13) Evening Sun; 14) Red Light.

General verdict: It is mildly impressive to see Julian and the boys last for over 50 minutes, but whereʼs the goddamn money shot?

I suppose that the first thing to cross many Strokes fansʼ minds when they saw the title of this album was — «wait, are the guys going psychedelic or something? this looks like a frickinʼ Eloy title or something!» (disclaimer: I fully acknowledge that not many Strokes fans probably know anything about Eloy, and that they are much better off that way). The second thing, then, would be to note the running length of the album — 52 minutes? Oh boy, deep shit coming on... what exactly happened to that perfect 35-minute limit?

Well, let me tell you this — had the Strokes gone all progressive and pretentious on our asses, it might have been an artistic disaster, but at least it would have made the album into a glorious disaster, rather than leaving it in this state of boggy slump. In reality, nothing much has changed, other than the bandʼs producer (David Kahne stepping in for Gordon Raphael) and the fact that the ever-lengthening stretches in between recording sessions gave Julian more opportunities for songwriting, and we now have 14 of his songs instead of the usual 11–12. Unfortunately, each of these songs is still about 1–1½ minutes longer than it should be, because the Strokes have never bothered to learn the art of dynamic expansion: you learn everything there is to be learned about each of the songs in 30–60 seconds, and then itʼs just repetition of ideas, very few of which deserve to be repeated without development.

The album was announced with a bit of deception: ʽJuiceboxʼ, the first single, is faster, tighter, and rockier than just about any other song on here, starting out with a bona fide ʽPeter Gunnʼ style bassline and quickly transforming into a grungy screamer in which Julian berates his lover for not wishing to join him over for the dubious delights of big city life. It is hard to resist a crunchy ʽPeter Gunnʼ rip-off, but the song does become fairly generic pop-punk in its screechy "why wonʼt you come over here?" bridge part, and the "youʼre so cold, youʼre so cold" chorus fails at delivering a properly desperate vibe either musically or vocally.

The second single, ʽHeart In A Cageʼ, was both more indicative of the overall pulse of the album (slower, poppier, darker) and more musically enjoyable in general, maybe because of Nick Valensiʼs loud, thick, in-yer-face glammy lead guitar lines echoing past heroes like Mick Ronson. Its only problem is that, like everything else here, it delivers one hundred percent of its punch in the opening sixty seconds — thereʼs a tension-relieving bridge section on which Casablancas goes for a tender Ray Davies-like approach, but it doesnʼt fit in all that well with the rest of the song and its melody goes absolutely nowhere. As Casablancas confesses himself within the opening verse of the song, "I donʼt write better when Iʼm stuck in the ground", and there are quite a few moments on this album when he almost literally is stuck in the ground.

The monolithic production style and the bandʼs noble, but sometimes wearying devotion to the same vocal and instrumental tones actually makes it very hard to distinguish between respectable and lazy songwriting when you have 50 minutes of this shit. ʽRazorbladeʼ strikes me as a good example of the former, with its unusual 5/4 tempo and dialog between a folksy, college-rockish, densely strummed rhythm guitar and highly melodic electric lead — but the production kind of eats away at both these parts, muffling them and making them secondary to Julianʼs post-punk nasal drawl. On the other hand, ʽVision Of Divisionʼ is a confusing mess of everything — I know I have complained about the lack of dynamics, and this song has plenty of it, but when you start out all grungy like Nirvana and then follow it up with an AC/DC-esque ʽThundrestruckʼ-style lead guitar, itʼs just... incoherent.

Maybe the worst thing about it all is that over the course of three albums, Julian Casablancas has still not managed to convince me that I should really truly care about himself, his girl problems, or his difficulties in coping with the complicated urban lifestyle with which he has this love-hate relationship. As the album begins its long crawl towards the finish line, it seems to become more and more personal, with superficially panic-stricken songs like ʽFear Of Sleepʼ inviting you to identify with their concerns — but the tune offers nothing to me other than a jumbled mess of distorted guitar and vocal noise, and I do not feel any real panic behind the mess. Maybe itʼs because of this sanitized production: I keep thinking about how, say, the Birthday Party would have recorded this song in the early Eighties, and against those memories the Strokes do not stand a chance. Basically, the deeper and more psychological Casablancas wants to go, the less he is liable to make a real impression.

Throw in a really unsatisfying conclusion — the album closer ʽRed Lightʼ sounds like a mildly passable monotonous pop-rocker that should have legitimately occupied a filler position in the middle — and it is not easy to understand why First Impressions Of Earth did not make much of an impression on most of Earthʼs critics. It is not a bad album: it is an album that tries very hard to transcend the inherent limitations of the artists, like a great 100-yard dasher betting on a 200-yard dash despite the doctorʼs wise advice. Cut out half of the songs, trim down the other half, invest a bit more in the arrangements, slightly de-sanitize the production, replace the annoying lyrics with simple boy-loves-girl stuff, and you have here the potential for an excellent modern pop-rock EP. As it is — another filler city for an already filler-choked century. 

A Silver Mt. Zion: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms...

A SILVER MT. ZION: HE HAS LEFT US ALONE BUT SHAFTS OF LIGHT SOMETIMES GRACE THE CORNER OF OUR ROOMS... (2000)

1) Broken Chords Can Sing A Little; 2) Sit In The Middle Of Three Galloping Dogs; 3)  Stumble Then Rise On Some Awkward Morning; 4) Movie (Never Made); 5) 13 Angels Standing Guard ʼround The Side Of Your Bed; 6) Long March Rocket Or Doomed Airliner; 7) Blown-Out Joy From Heavenʼs Mercied Hole; 8) For Wanda.

General verdict: GY!BE-lite for those who cannot or will not emotionally afford a symphony of a thousand — actually, a pretty viable alternative.

Not everybody knows that in between themselves and their various friends and relations, GY!BE have had approximately fifteen billion musical side projects going on over the past twenty years, in all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable configurations. Many of these projects existed solely for the purposes of being able to put out records with titles even longer than those of the regular GY!BE, but some actually had agendas of their own, and it would be irresponsible to just brush all this stuff off without listening. However, seeking them out one by one, and diligently reviewing all of them would take an extra lifetime, so I am going to focus on just a few which were arguably more important than others — those involving the bandʼs founding fathers and representing significant artistic variations while still preserving the base musical philosophy of GY!BE itself. And those which at least have Wikipedia pages of their own or something like that, because I donʼt really take pride in digging deeper than everybody else.

The first, and arguably the most important, of these side projects was A Silver Mt. Zion, later to be known as The (or Thee) Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (plus or minus Tra-La-La Band), since it was led personally by Efrim Menuck, and the first lineup of this new band consisted of Menuck, GY!BE bassist Thierry Amar, and GY!BE violinist Sophie Trudeau, with just a few additional musicians on a handful of tracks. Menuck founded the band so he could test out ideas that would allegedly be unsuitable for the GY!BE format — essentially, I believe, he wanted to spend some time working in a more minimalistic, chamber-like environment, without all the monumentality of proverbial GY!BE crescendos.

At the same time, even the title of Silver Mt. Zionʼs first album is sufficient to understand that the basic vibe of this music would remain relatively unchanged. If anything, it is even closer to GY!BEʼs early beginnings (ʽThe Dead Flag Bluesʼ, etc.) than Lift Your Skinny Fists — more of that quietly mournful post-apocalyptic music frozen in a no-longer-inhabited world of dust and ashes, rather than the epic create-and-destroy-and-create-again musical waves of GY!BE at their orchestral peak. The pompousness of the albumʼs title is ever so slightly deflated upon learning that the record was dedicated by Menuck to the memory of his dog, recently deceased from cancer, but only very slightly — after all, Dog is God, isnʼt it? In addition, Menuck has stated that the record was supposed to have a specifically Judaistic feel, which, I think, stems more from the overall by-the-rivers-of-Babylon mournful vibe rather than from specific music elements, but then I am not the best connoisseur of Jewish religious music in the world, and I can only swear by my intuition that the music here is far more reminiscent of Góreckiʼs Third than any Jewish laments Iʼve ever heard. Not that it really matters.

The record itself is pretty good, though not quite the devastating tragic masterpiece as initially suggested by its musical themes. Menuck himself does not play that much guitar on it; instead, he embraces the piano, and most of the tracks are essentially a dialog between his modernistic / minimalistic piano playing and Sophie Trudeauʼs equally minimalistic violin lamentations, sometimes joined by Amarʼs sparse, jazzy bass plucking. Only one track feels like a slightly alleviated take on the classic GY!BE vibe — ʽSit In The Middle Of Three Galloping Dogsʼ, with Aidan Girt providing drum reinforcements, is the closest they come here to an actual GY!BE crescendo, though most of the crescendo effects are only provided by Girt himself and by Sophieʼs complex violin overdubs.

Judging the quality of the individual tracks is hard, and perhaps should be a better job for those with a heavy interest in contemporary classical music; my vague opinion is that the Menuck-Trudeau collaboration is competent and generates genuine serious atmosphere, but most of the tracks end up rather interchangeable, and the entire album works great as a mood-setter on a gray and depressing morning, with endless slow rain turning the ground to mush in front of your window, but not so great as a collection of individually memorable tracks with outstanding musical themes. At the very least, something like that see-sawing violin rhythm rocking the boat on ʽSit In The Middleʼ is more like a sad lullaby than a mind-blower of ʽStormʼ or ʽSleepʼ caliber, if you know what I mean.

Two quite unusual tracks, however, are sandwiched in the middle. ʽMovie (Never Made)ʼ is a rare example of a lyrical rant, delivered by Menuck to a quiet piano and bass musical background (no violin this time, or it would have drowned out his message) — itʼs not every day that you get to hear the guy singing, and maybe it is a good thing, because he sounds just like a generically over-emotive indie kid, but it is still interesting to hear him deliver his cryptic lyrics which go from Jewish references (dancing the horah on Mount Zion) to creepy visions of revolutionary violence ("letʼs televise and broadcast the raping of kings").

Essentially it still functions as merely a verbal introduction to the albumʼs centerpiece, ʽ13 Angels Standing Guard ʼRound The Side Of Your Bedʼ — regardless of whether you like or hate it, it is most certainly the one track here that you will not soon forget. Built around a rhythm track of treated vocal samples, it builds up in intensity with the gradual addition of Trudeauʼs violin overdubs, but the main focus is always on those wispy sighs and moans, with a «lead vocal» that rises in pitch from «angelese» to «chipmunkese» and, depending on your perspective, will come across as either ultra-heavenly or thoroughly ridiculous, the best thing about it being that you can shift your perspective any time, like in an optical illusion. I guess we could technically define the compositionʼs genre as «New Age», but with particularly strong emphasis on «New», because it will wreak havoc on your eardrums rather than placate them like a well-behaved New Age track by the likes of Enya typically should.

The rest of the album is nowhere near as experimental, because, as I have already said, most of these tricks you have already experienced on early GY!BE records. Still, I am a big admirer of Sophie Trudeauʼs violin work on the whole, and the record went down really easy on me — I certainly get the point of segregating a «mini-GY!BE vibe» from the pack, and I also appreciate that they settled for a relatively brief running time (a more minimalistic approach, after all, does require a more minimalistic presence in the spacetime continuum as well) — 47 minutes is just the right time to spare on a solitary cosmic lament about the end of the world as we know it. 

David Byrne: American Utopia

DAVID BYRNE: AMERICAN UTOPIA (2018)

1) I Dance Like This; 2) Gasoline And Dirty Sheets; 3) Every Day Is A Miracle; 4) Dogʼs Mind; 5) This Is That; 6) Itʼs Not Dark Up Here; 7) Bullet; 8) Doing The Right Thing; 9) Everybodyʼs Coming To My House; 10) Here.

General verdict: A record that is supposed to make you feel happy, but instead makes you feel confused... and this would have been a compliment in 1979, but not in 2018.

David Byrne has been so active and so much around in the first two decades of the 21st century that it is actually surprising to realize that American Utopia is his first proper solo album of new material in fourteen years — everything since Grown Backwards has been either soundtracks, or collaborations, or guest appearances. Even on this album, most of the songs are co-credited to David and Brian Eno (two to David and electronic artist Daniel Lopatin), but at least the album as a whole is not attributed to the two of them, which is understandable, since American Utopia is very much Byrne in spirit and relatively little Eno.

One of the reasons is that, as the years go by, David seems less and less interested in making «pure» music and is more and more slipping into the Wagnerian spirit of Gesamtkunstwerk, something that had already become fully manifested in the era of Stop Making Sense and True Stories and has now become the norm for the man — American Utopia was announced as part of a much larger multi-media project called Reasons To Be Cheerful (title borrowed from Ian Dury) and was very quickly transformed into a Broadway musical that had itself a nice little run from late 2019 to early 2020, shutting down right in time for the COVID-19 disaster. Speaking of which, the album should play right up 2020ʼs general alley — allegedly it is all about staying cheerful and optimistic in the face of terrible odds, something that was fairly characteristic of Byrneʼs art from day one but is now directly pronounced rather than just hinted at.

Although from a purely musical standpoint, the album is highly eclectic and its tunes are difficult to assign to any particular genre, it is clear that musical structures and arrangement details here are secondary to the artistic message — itʼs just the way David has always worked and you will neither catch him pandering to any particular trend nor dumbing down the music to amplify its mass appeal. For instance, ʽGasoline And Dirty Sheetsʼ will combine Indian sitars, country-western harmonicas, old-fashioned New Wave guitars and new-fashioned drum programming to the point where all this synthesis leaves you confused and disoriented; but whether all this kaleidoscopic mush actually has a point, and whether the music in this song really «matters» next to its lyrics, is quite debatable.

Maybe it was the collaboration with St. Vincent that rubbed off so seriously on David, but the problem remains the same as it was with Love This Giant — I respect the work that went into the making of this album, but I do not properly feel it. At the core, these are fairly accessible pop songs, often with catchy choruses and shit, but if their point is indeed to transmit a feeling of hope and optimism in the midst of troubled times, I must confess that I sense neither too much trouble nor too much happiness in the music. Good case in point: ʽEvery Day Is A Miracleʼ, where the somewhat somber verses are supposed to contrast with the somewhat cheerful chorus. Lyrically, the song is astute and occasionally hilarious, right from the point where David reflects on what Heaven should look like for a chicken ("...and God is a very old rooster / And eggs are like Jesus, his son"). But musically, the verse is reduced to a few rumbly bars of synth-bass and the chorus is just a limp ska pattern whose melody might just as well be played by a bunch of automatons. It is loud enough and you might be tempted to sing along to "every day is a miracle, every day is an unpaid bill", yet nothing in the song either creates real tension or relieves it. Itʼs just a song, no better or worse than a million other ones.

I think that the only number on American Utopia where I smelled the faintest glint of tension was ʽItʼs Not Dark Up Hereʼ, with its jumpy change of tone from verse to chorus and mildly spooky "HEY!" that changes the discourse from protagonist to his imaginary-hallucinatory conversation partner in the skies above. It does not hurt, either, that the song is driven by paranoidally funky guitars, not unlike in the good old days — yet even so, thereʼs light years of distance between the spookiness of this chorus and something like, say, ʽMemories Canʼt Waitʼ or ʽSlippery Peopleʼ.

In the end, while I cannot for the life of me properly badmouth any of these songs for any specific sins, I still cannot help but view American Utopia as an artistic failure. It is clearly a conceptual project that must have meant a lot to David at this point, but even a weakass Talking Heads album like True Stories ended up making more sense and providing more emotional release than this collection of well-crafted, but ultimately cold and limp songs. Certainly the words deserve to be studied, and I am glad to see Byrne, at the age of 66, in such fine vocal form and with so many different ideas, even when they are derivative or ineffective. And perhaps in the context of his Broadway show, interspersed with genuine Heads classics, they do make better sense. But for now they do nothing to dissuade me from the opinion that Byrneʼs spark of genius went extinct somewhere around the time of Look Into The Eyeball, and that not even a global pandemic or a worldwide economic crisis will be enough to rekindle it at this time. 

ProjeKct Two: Live Groove

PROJEKCT TWO: LIVE GROOVE (1999)

1) Sus-tayn-Z; 2) Heavy ConstruKction; 3) The Deception Of The Thrush; 4) X-chayn-jiZ; 5) Light ConstruKction; 6) Vector Shift To Planet Detroit; 7) Contrary ConstruKction; 8) Live Groove; 9) Vector Shift To Planet Belewbeloid; 10) 21st Century Schizoid Man.

General verdict: A somewhat compromising live album that seems to make less of a point than its studio predecessor; still fairly powerful in certain spots.

As of now, no fewer than twenty-six different live shows by ProjeKct Two are available for purchase through DGMlive, and while it could be considered a respectable and devoted move on the part of Only Solitaire to give each and every one a thorough analytical check-up, I am not yet sure that such an expenditure of energy would bring final and permanent balance to the cosmos. Consequently, for now I will humbly limit myself to just a few words on Live Groove, the very first commercially released album by ProjeKct Two which was originally available as a part of the ProjeKcts boxset, or as a stand-alone title in Japan (where else?).

The first thing you see is that none of the tracks here overlap with Space Groove — but a few actually overlap with the soon-to-be newest incarnation of King Crimson, such as ʽDeception Of The Thrushʼ and the ʽConstruKctionʼ pieces (ʽLight ConstruKctionʼ would be reworked into ʽConstruKction Of Lightʼ, while ʽHeavy ConstruKctionʼ would later lend its title to the first live album from 2000). This is quite telling, since the basic idea of the ProjeKcts was to never repeat anything twice in the exact same way; yet it also means that this weirdly unique sci-fi vibe that the band had going on Space Groove is not felt nearly as strongly on the live release, much of which is more in line with traditional KC-type improvisations.

One thing that puzzles me is that only the regular ProjeKct Two trio is credited on the album, with Belew indicated as responsible for electronic drums; however, at least two of the tunes, the opening ʽSus-tayn-Zʼ and the title track, clearly feature four instruments — two guitars, bass, and regular, not electronic, drums, which actually sound like Bruford, not Belew. Was there some mix-up? is this really ProjeKct One material that somehow found its twisted way onto a ProjeKct Two album? I am quite happy to hear both of these jams, with «sus-tayn» really playing a large role throughout (actually, the main rhythm groove is exactly the same on both tracks), but it probably wouldnʼt have hurt to clarify this in the credits.

Other than that, itʼs fairly heavy business as usual, with Fripp and Gunn regularly laying on thick, crunchy layers of almost grunge-like atmosphere (ʽHeavy ConstruKctionʼ indeed); whether Belewʼs electronic drumming agrees with this atmosphere or not is up to the listener to decide, but I suppose that it is, to a large extent, responsible for why the final results still feel «weird» rather than «ass-kicking» (well, that and all the effects that make Frippʼs guitar, every once in a while, metamorphose into a symphonic orchestra or a prepared piano). When the band slows down, it is time for synthetic experiments — ʽDeception Of The Thrushʼ combines the robotic industrial pace of ʽIndisciplineʼ with fuzzy atonal solos that sound straight out of 1974 — but while they are all atmospheric and listenable, once again, I wouldnʼt go as far as to suggest that the stunned audiences were witnessing the birth of some new musical genre here.

Most interesting is the inclusion, at the end, of a very special rendition of ʽ21st Century Schizoid Manʼ — not so much the song itself as part of the ʽMirrorsʼ section, played with the aid of Adrianʼs «V-drums», Treyʼs bass, and (supposedly) Frippʼs guitar which has this time been rigged to sound like chimes. Itʼs just a short two-minute long segment, appended to the main bulk of the show like some sort of ʽHer Majestyʼ-style musical joke, but it is pretty symbolic of the ProjeKctsʼ burning desire to change as many rules as possible while still retaining the Crimsonian essence in everything they do. Not that the piece, by itself, does anything other than demonstrate what we already knew well enough (namely, how insanely cool and catchy that jazzy mid-section is), but, well, a surprise is a surprise even if it does not have any particular meaning.

On the whole, this is hardly the ProjeKctsʼ shiniest moment — sort of a half-assed compromise between the completely different sound of Space Groove and a regular King Crimson jam — but for those interested in the «road to the Double Duo», it might be one of the most important ProjeKct releases.